Bronx bred, he’s a odd blend of bookish brashness, someone who can, on a dime, go from discussing the finer points of semicolons to screaming at a cabbie who just cut him off. In Italian.

Only two things really scare me — my wife and shopping for feminine hygiene products. But the way he juggles things intimidates me enough that I don’t complain about my workload.

But he’s quirky.

He tends to use colloquialisms vociferously. Not your usual ones either. In fact, he has them tailored to the practice of journalism. I think he invents them.

We call them “Mele-isms.”

He calls easy-to-do stories “low-hanging fruit.” I hate fruit. I like cupcakes. OK?

If a story is simple, he’ll tell us to “just add water and stir.” Or: “This shouldn’t be a heavy lift.”

Sometimes he’ll call an easy story a “ground ball.” Chris, you never know where a story may lead you. And besides, I stunk at ground balls.

A few years back I got a call from a Tunkhannock Township man complaining about his neighbor. A ground ball, right? Except that the neighbor was a sex offender who changed the address on his home so it wouldn’t match the one he registered under Megan’s Law.

Oops, bad hop.

We cover a lot of local meetings, at municipalities, school boards and county agencies. If the audience is expected to be vocal and emotional, he tells us to watch to see “if they lob a bunch of grenades.” Figuratively, of course.

When he goes into a meeting and can’t be reached, he’ll say he’s “out of pocket.”

And then there’s one of my favorites. Recognizing his own confusion over a story, he called himself “a few fries short of a happy meal.”

Hey, he said it, not me.

Chris credits his dad’s cross-cultural upbringing and stint in the Navy for his own familiarity with these sayings. But it’s his odd use in the context of a story that elevates them to a Mele-ism.

Writers are more comfortable with words than numbers. He once told me: “There are three kinds of people in this world: Those who can do math and those who cannot.”

After reading a news item first on Twitter, he called the service “the canary in the coal mine.”

And in encouraging us to make better use of social media, he said “the time to get onto Twitter is not when the plane lands in the Hudson.”

Chris, we love all your quirkiness. It keeps us entertained.

My advice to you? Put your best foot forward and stay on good footing. You’ll have to bite the bullet and eat humble pie when you’re barking up the wrong tree. But bury the hatchet and show your true colors.